12 hours from now, 11 years ago, I was very nearly killed riding a bicycle to work. I’m partially physically disabled now. Holding posture is very limited for me, but I’m still mobile. Last year I did the same ride on the same route. I ran into someone I worked with that was doing well and it had a disproportionate negative effect to see their success.
For the first 9 years I tried to ignore the anniversary, but that doesn’t work well either. I still feel every bit of the pain I felt that day when I woke up in the hospital, so moving on is not an option. I’m a shell of my former self. I’m doing good to ride a bike a couple dozen miles at most and can’t stop, sit, or stand for more than a few minutes. Does anyone with experience like this have any suggestions to reduce the dip; to morn one’s own death in a more productive way?
For me, the most productive way to take care of grief is to sit with it.
It’s like when we hit our heads, and we have to just lay down and be with the pain until it passes.
Emotional pain is the same. But our habit is to try to run from ourselves instead.
Not OP, but man I love this view on it. The beauty is in it’s simplicity. Thank you.
I had good teachers :) And I’m glad I was able to pass on their wisdom and that folks found it helpful.
I like to say that we can fool everyone but ourselves(Obviously you can even gaslight yourself because brains are weird like that but it’s still not healthy). The idea being that you can hide from stuff by making everyone else think you’re fine but you’ll know. Every hiding place you find, no matter how good, necessarily includes yourself.
Well, it’s the same mechanism that allows us to gaslight ourselves, that allows us to take care of ourselves.
We are not one thing, and the mind isn’t a monolith. It is lots of little cells talking to each other. And taking care of each other the best they know how.
Sometimes they think the best way to take care of ourselves is to hide pain away until we have space to deal with it. Unfortunately, our cultural habits tend to keep us so caught up that we never go back and take care of that pain when we do have the capacity.
Setting time aside to be with ourselves, to take care of ourselves. That is meditation. And while it does take practice, it is our birthright. Just like when we hit our head and we have to meditate on the pain until it passes. We all know how to do it.
100%. I like the guided stuff myself because it keeps my focus and easier to “do”. Also naps/lie downs with no music or other sounds(and a timer!) can be nice.
Yeah, I actually have a pain condition. So by sit, I meant lay down, and often it’s with a guided meditation.
I started working with the bramavaharas recently and those have been really helpful.
Learning to feel grief, while most of my mind remains equanimous toward it. That has been a real blessing.